


Now I Am Free

by ladywolf



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Gen, Multi, Other, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Torture, Self-Harm, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 05:57:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21070016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywolf/pseuds/ladywolf
Summary: “Come back. Even as a shadow,even as a dream.”— 	Euripides, Herakles





	Now I Am Free

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place post the s2 finale where Santanico rides off on her motorcycle. If you know anything about my writing, you know it gets pretty dark around here so don't act surprised!
> 
> Suggested listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWfiAeY8Z5o

The road is long.

With dawn rising behind her, and miles of barren dessert to guide her, she rides. Nothing, eventually gives way to tiny peaks on the horizon. The roar of her engine driving her closer to them until they become mountains. She passes them and they become small again. There’s a town hidden behind the peaks, in the middle of nowhere. It's perfect.

* * *

“sssss Santanicooo…Reinaaa”

His voice forces her eyes to pop open. Santanico clenches her jaw and sits up. It’s 8:00 pm. She would like to be sleeping if she could, but her bones began turning to stone, sinking her deeper and deeper. The sound of cars hummed in the distance, along with people laughing, talking, and living their best lives on a Friday night.

Some nights she’d just wander—every night she’d wander.

Santanico steps outside into the bustling night. Outside there’s a girl on the corner. Same girl as always, just down the street from where she sleeps. She serves as her landmark, when she sees her, she knows she's almost home. Santanico walked over to her, gave her a fistful of cash and told her to leave town or she'd claw her eyes out. Wide-eyed but steadfast, the girl took the money and ran off. Santanico watched until the girl was too small to see. Disappeared.

Since her arrival, she frequented the casino’s night club. Reasons being: it's loud, crowded, and full of people from out of town. No one would notice if they disappeared. "No eating civilians” Ha. After Jack Knife Jed’s it didn't matter. No rules. No thinking—the casino was great for that.

On the weekends the casino had dancers perform on the main stage. She had overheard they were better than the “rockies?”, rock something. Problem was, everyone was drunk off their ass. Somehow, no matter how much she drank, it never had quite the same effect. These monkeys called humans however, lost all sense of control, barreling over themselves aimlessly—screaming at the top of their lungs. It was good this way. Not one of them would remember her in the morning.

Unfortunately, on this particular night she’d run into a certain drunkard that had a penchant for not leaving her alone. He’s a regular, but not a local. He commutes every weekend to escape his 9 to 5 pencil pusher, picket fence life back home, and he never shuts up about it.

The first time he’d seen her, he was completely wasted. From the other side of the room you could spot him screaming his head off, talking to no one, until he spots her. Half falling over, he shouts, “Youuuu! Y-y-you’re the dancer!” She rolled her eyes and walked away before he could catch up.

On another night he'd found her again. She was sitting at the bar when he called from behind. The mixture of fermented drink, cologne, and just a hint of vomit was too much this evening. “You’re the dancer from the show here!” He said. Before he got too close, she left—better to avoid him than eat him, she thought.

* * *

“Sssss Santanicooo…Reinaaa. You didn’t think you could get rid of me that easssy, did you?” Hair standing on end, she forced herself awake.

It's 7:00 pm. Tonight she had plans to go to Sequins, the gay bar. A waitress from the diner down the street invited her damn near every chance she saw her; and she talked it up good. It would be nice break from the casino anyway.

Just like the casino's night club, it was loud, crowded, and filled with out-of-towners. Except this was nothing like the casino’s club. Bodies dressed in feathers and rainbows, covered in jewels and sparkles, dancing on lights, with lights, with others, and always laughing. Everyone seemed...free. And as she enters, a different song comes on. A room once blasting with brass and bass slowed down to a soft guitar. The dance floor empties... A sound so familiar that she found herself unable to stop, as she gently swayed back and forth. Laser lights dance around her. The strings of the guitar sing like a lullaby, soft and warm, slow and gentle. She closed her eyes. The melody takes her like leaves flowing through the wind, to and fro. “Kisa,” a woman says. She’s tall, with long dark hair that goes past her hips. Her clothes are tattered. Her jaw is tense but she smiles when a little girl runs towards her. The woman picks her up and looks into her eyes. The girl pushes her face into the woman’s dark hair, then pulls away and laughs. The woman laughs with her, while watching her in wonder. The corner of her lips are still upturned, but her eyes are welling to glossy, dark pools. Her eyes study the little girl—following the lines of her nose, her cheeks, her eyes and ears. Fixated on her every detail. “Kisa” she’s says again. The DJ cuts the music back to electronic sounds and sirens.

Santanico’s lips were hung up on one word. “Mama.” She took in a breath and walked toward the door.

* * *

“Santanicooo…Reinaaa…I’m still here.” Cold eyes stare her in the face like sweet berries, like holly. Reaching his hand to her neck, she could kill him, but she hesitates. 

It's a little after 5:00 am. The sky was blacker than night but it wouldn't be long before the sun started to peak out. The nightclub was still roaring with goers, but it was time to leave. She walked outside and headed towards her bike--hidden from the main road. Footsteps soon followed behind her.

“Dancer!” He called out.

It's him. Her secret admirer, screaming, smells and all. She stopped in her tracks. If only he had the good sense to leave her alone, but she turned around anyway. "You must have me mistaken for someone else." She said.

“Why are you lying to me? I know it’s you..." He babbled on. Her heart beats faster. She can hear it pounding so loud in her chest that it just might explode. Her jaw clenched, along with her fist, but she keeps walking away. Each step further gets heavier and heavier, as if a chain is pulling her back, changing her mind, and flooding her with rage. To sink her teeth into him would be too easy, and for what? There’s a hundred more just like him. He shouted after her. “Puta! Stop being such a slut!” He then followed her across the street. “Come on mama give me a dance!” Santanico turned down a dark alley, in the complete opposite direction of her bike, and waited. He saw her leaned against the wall, waiting with cigarette in hand. “I just want one dance.” He said. She smiled and threw her cigarette to the floor. As Santanico walked closer to him, he reached his hand out to her. She took it. And he drew her closer, put his hands on her hips. She took to him like driftwood in the ocean, caressed by the waves, dead inside. “Isn’t this better?” He said.

Santanico hummed a tune while swaying back and forth with him. She rested her hands behind his neck, stroked his hair, gazed into his eyes with that forever smile. “That’s a beautiful song you’re singing. What is—“

"Shhhh." She touched her finger to his mouth, then brought his head down to rest on her neck. Fangs out, claws out, she continued the dance. She continued to hum, as he closed his eyes, limp in her embrace. "_Hay muertos que no hacen ruido, Llorona, y es más grande su penar_” She sung.

”You have a beautiful voi--" With utter precision she punched into his chest and grabbed his heart, feeling it beat in her hands. He was petrified. His mouth hung open like a pez dispenser with blood pouring down. and before he realized it, she tore his heart out.

Santanico sucked all the blood from it as he fell to the floor, slowing to death. When his heart was nothing more than scraps, she took it, and him, down to the end of the alley where the city meets the outlying desert. She chucked the bloody pieces into the darkness and then hid his body deep in the bushes. The coyotes will do the rest.

* * *

“ssss Reinaaaa.” His hand coiled around her neck, exposing his fangs painfully slow. He was going to inject his poison in her again, keeping her lifeless and immobile, but it was pointless. She was already under his effect. Since the beginning of time, imprisoned by his kingdom, forced into servility. “Be sssstill.”

Four hours she slept. Four hours before his cold hands nearly killed her. She could still feel him on her legs, her arms, pressed against her body. He was gone and yet still here, here because of her. The sun crept in through the warehouse. Soft rays, peaking through the roof, giving her perfect control of the pain she’d allow. All this time fighting to be free and for what? He was still with her, embedded in her like roots in the earth. Her skin begins to singe, peeling and flaking.

The cover of the trees, her gallon hat, and long sleeve shirt protected her from the sun. It also made her hot as hell. Not nearly as hot as the temple in the summer, but pretty close. A ten level pyramid made thicker than brick—it was a giant oven. Not full of polvorones or galletas, just girls. Just Santanico burning in her chamber—Carlos’ favorite concha. She smirked and continued to walk up the forested mountainside.

When she reached a cliff’s edge, she sat, and waited, staring at the sun as dusk begun to disappear. From up here, the sun could only kiss her face, strong enough just to provide a bit of warmth. A breeze embraced her and she stood up, so high up she realized, and then with a step forward, she fell. Plummeting towards the ground, an angel without wings, she closed her eyes, preparing to crash into the earth without a fight.

“Santanico!” And there they were—on their knees. Her dual blade dagger carving into him. She could see it, his insides spilling to the floor, forcing the snake out of him. What makes him a god in her clutches? Malvado looked her in the eye, and it burned, everything inside her branded with his mark. She could kill him in one breath. “Don’t do it.” He said, eyes bulging and teeth gritted. In the midst of rage, she hadn’t noticed his hand in her chest, wrapped around her heart. When she charged him, he held up his hand, an apparent and futile attempt to block her, and she had been too focused on ripping him in half. “If you kill me, I’m taking you with me.”He looked into her eyes, waiting for her to say anything, do anything, contest, but she was ready. That immovable resolve within her was always there. He always knew, and he always had the upper hand to stop it, until now. “You’re mine!” He shouted as he closed his hand around her heart, smothering it.

And in that same second, with one strike, she cut the life keeping him alive. He burned to ashes before her, and she too begun to burn. She felt a heat spread over her as her skin and flesh peeled away. The heat was so strong and so bright, it blinded her. She awoke with the sun shinning on her, her wings carrying her towards it’s glow until it enveloped her completely. And in the brightness there was no pain and no memory. A whisper carried so soft on her lips, as a prayer to the sun itself. “Free.”

And then she opened her eyes. She was still falling in the dark, about to hit the ground when her wings opened behind her, half-hazardly breaking her fall. Branches snapped as she crashed towards the earth; and moonlight returned her to the shadows.

Covered in thorns and dirt, sullen in the ground, she would like to lay there forever, to turn to stone and sink into the ether…

But the night was no longer young.

* * *

Just as the sun began to burn the flesh under her shirt, she walked into a diner. She sat the bar and grabbed a menu handed to her by a waitress.  
"I thought I told you to leave town." She said.

Two seats down to her left was the girl from the corner, shielding her face behind a newspaper. Wide-eyed as ever, she set the newspaper down next to a bouquet of white tulips, and her finished plate. "Actually, I was just headed out." The girl said.

"You don't sound so sure."

"Trust that I like my eyes exactly where they are. And they've seen what you can do too." Santanico turns to face her. Both hold a stare without blinking or flinching—acknowledging each other in silence. Santanico squints and then focused back on her plate. "Anyway, my girlfriend is waiting outside for me. We're goin' to Las Vegas. Have you ever been?"

"No." Santanico said. She took the glass of water the waitress handed to her, staring at the ice splitting inside. The girl from the corner got up and walked towards the entrance. She pulled out a single white tulip and handed it to her.

"If you get the chance, you should come some time." She smiled softly and walked away, but before she stepped out of the diner she stopped. “By the way, I never got you name?”

Santanico almost smiled, her lips turning up before she could stop herself. “It’s Kisa.” Santanico held the flower in her hands, staring into it's pristine petals. 

Maybe, she thought.

Quizás...Kisa. She laughed to herself again.

Maybe if she was born somewhere else, maybe if she was born on another day, maybe if she wasn't born at all, maybe if none of this ever happened... things could be different.

But as least she finally got all that she wanted.

She should have wanted more.


End file.
